Governance, Economics, and Interdependence: Constraints and Possibilities in Sub-Saharan Africa

By Julius O. Ihonvbere 9-12 June 1994

Paper presented at the Summer Institute on "Governance, Equity,
and the Global Poor: A Curriculum Development Institute," Sponsored by
Spelman College and Interfaith Hunger Appeal, Spelman College, Atlanta,
Georgia, June 9-12, 1994.

The breathtaking pace of
political change in Africa has surpassed any predictions or
expectations....Almost every country has experienced some form of
citizens' pressure for broader public participation in political and
economic decision-making. Nearly two dozen authoritarian leaders have
been overthrown or forced to share power.

Africa is experiencing a revolution as profound as
the wave of independence that began to sweep the continent three decades
ago (Africa News 1992, 1).

Whatever democratic advances have been
attained in Africa at this stage are still largely structural and/or
constitutional; certainly a strong breath of fresh air, but likely to
end up in some countries as only cosmetic and/or temporary. The process
has a long way to go in much of the continent (Decalo 1992, 8).

There is no doubting the fact that a wave of
democratization is sweeping the developing world. In the vast majority
of nations, new issues, demands, and alignments are emerging on the
political terrain. Popular organizations and communities and "members
of all classes found themselves sufficiently empowered to undermine
authoritarian rulers. The astonishing discovery that mass participation
could actually help topple governments hitherto impervious to the
demands of their own people has made popular involvement in government
the starting point for reconstructing political order..." (Kasfir 1992,
587). Largely a response to frustrations with authoritarian rule and
the suffocation of civil society, the end of the Cold War and the new
disposition towards support for popular movements have invigorated these
efforts. Military dictatorships have been forced to accommodate popular
interests and to organize open elections. Presidents-for-life have been
forced to reexamine their claims to permanent control of political power
and to open up political spaces. In many developing social formations,
a new political culture is emerging with popular groups forming new
alliances, asking new questions, forging new programs, and expanding
political spaces through demands for social justice, equity,
accountability, participation, human rights, and democracy. These
demands, and the new strategies designed to achieve them, mainly through
multiparty political activities, have altered to a great extent the
overall character of the political landscape.

The domestic
political struggles have been effectively complimented (and in most
cases encouraged) by developments in the global system. As indicated
earlier, the end of the Cold War reduced the relevance of the tyrants
and decadent political rulers of the South. The Western powers that had
earlier supported dictators and brutal governments as those in Zaire,
Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, Nigeria, the Sudan, and Somalia to use African
examples, now began to make new demands on their former allies. Good
governance was demanded as a precondition for further support. Good
governance became part of the package of political conditionalities
imposed on Third World leaders by the lenders, donors, and creditors as
preconditions for economic support. In Kenya, it was the only way to
get Daniel Arap Moi to reach some accommodation with domestic
constituencies and allow popular elections. The election saw the
opposition win a hundred seats in parliament. In Malawi, Kamuzu Banda,
the country's president-for-life was forced to make concessions to civil
society when British aid was slashed in half. Even in Nigeria,
sanctions from the European Community, Canada, the United States, and
the United Kingdom were important in forcing General Ibrahim Babangida
to unveil his "hidden agenda" and leave office in disgrace.

In its 1989 report on sub-Saharan Africa, the World Bank gave
further credence to the growing assumption that African economies were
in crisis because of the absence of good governance, decentralization,
accountability and lesser government intervention in the economy. In
his introduction to the report, Barber Conable, the World Bank's
President noted that "A root cause of weak economic performance in the
past has been the failure of public institutions. Private sector
initiative and market mechanisms are important, but they must go
hand-in-hand with good governance- a public service that is efficient, a
judicial system that is reliable, and an administration that is
accountable to its public" (World Bank 1989, xii emphasis added). As a
strategy to promote good governance, Conable suggested the urgent need
for a process for "empowering ordinary people, and especially women, to
take greater responsibility for improving their lives- measures that
foster grassroots organization, that nurture rather than obstruct
informal sector enterprises, and that promote nongovernmental and
intermediary organizations (World Bank 1989, xii). Finally the Bank
made the categorical declaration that consolidating the gains of
structural adjustment was not enough; that African governments must
address "fundamental questions relating to human capacities,
institutions, governance,...;" "ordinary people should participate more
in designing and implementing development programs;" the state should
"no longer be an entrepreneur, but a promoter of private producers;" and
that "Africa needs not just less government but better
government-government that concentrates its efforts less on direct
interventions and more on enabling others to be productive" (World Bank
1989, 2-5).

At a general level these are very worthy positions
even if they are not new. For over a decade, African and Africanist
scholars have drawn attention to the political nature and context of the
African crisis. It was contended that the economic crisis which was
manifested in crippling foreign debts and high debt-servicing
obligations, declining foreign aid and investments, rising bankruptcies,
unemployment and inflation, institutional decay and infrastructural
disintegration, crime, insecurity, and rising malnutrition and social
decay, were largely symptoms of serious political deformities,
distortions, and disarticulations. The Economic Commission for Africa
(ECA) (1990, 17) admits that Africa is experiencing a crisis of
"unprecedented and unacceptable proportions," and that "the political
context of socio-economic development has been characterized, in many
instances, by an over-centralization of power and impediments to the
effective participation of the overwhelming majority of the people in
social, political and economic development." When the World Bank and
Conable talk about "good governance" and "empowering ordinary people"
there is a seeming trivialization of an otherwise serious problem. The
issues are conceptualized and addressed outside the historical
experience and environment of Africa. There is an assumed harmony among
and within social forces and classes. In fact, when "ordinary people"
are empowered, what are they expected to do with the power? Are they
expected to shake hands with the ruthless exploiters and oppressors of
yesterday? Will they ever have the same socio-economic and political
interests as those who had become outrageously wealthy from looting the
public purse? Can their "empowered" institutions and communities serve
the interests of the dominant elites, including military dictators? Will
their interests suddenly become the same as those of foreign capital
just because the magic of "good governance" has been invoked?

What the questions above signify is that there are more
fundamental issues to be addressed rather than cataloging the
characteristics of "good governance." To be sure, political
conditionality enables donors, creditors, and lenders to put pressure on
recalcitrant, corrupt, and repressive leaders in Africa. We cannot
however overlook the fact that these same Western leaders were in many
instances installed, nurtured and sustained over the years by the same
leaders who have now turned against them. Many African leaders have
perfected the art of brutal and inhuman politics, divide-and-rule
tactics, and a total commitment to retention of power through the
asphyxiation of civil society. As well, political conditionality makes
it possible to justify the redirection of aid and investment to other
parts of the world. This has contributed to the further marginalization
of Africa in the international division of labor, a situation noted by
African leaders and nongovernmental organizations in the African Charter
for Popular Participation: "We...observe that given the current world
political and economic situation, Africa is becoming further
marginalized in world affairs, both geo-politically and economically"
(Economic Commission for Africa 1990, 18). More importantly, political
conditionality simply complements the economic conditionality already
imposed on poverty-stricken, debt-ridden, and desperate African states
by the World Bank, the IMF and other creditors. In the majority of
African states, development planning, financial matters and public
policy were already being determined, influenced, or severely
constrained by the policies, interests, and power of these bodies.
Political conditionality therefore, would create a platform to using the
disbursement of foreign assistance to condition, influence, and
determine the content and context of politics, the political agenda, and
the overall ideological content of politics. Once there is
complementarity between economic and political conditionalities; and
African leaders, prodemocracy activists, politicians, bureaucrats,
intellectuals, researchers, business men and women, as well as
grassroots organizations come to imbibe and accept the ideology of
international capitalism as the driving force behind their activities,
Africa would have lost once again, in spite of the end of the Cold War,
the ability to be original, creative, and independent in fashioning out
an internally driven agenda for reconstruction, growth, and development.

Richard Sandbrook, in a recent study of the African predicament
and the implications of the World Bank's new agenda and emphasis on
"good governance" has noted that it is important not to lose sight of
the "broader ideological implications" of this strategy. According to
Sandbrook, "(s)ince their creation, the IMF and the World Bank have
consistently aimed to integrate as many national economies as possible
into multilateral global capitalist economy....Both agencies have
encouraged, in countries receiving their loans, monetary, fiscal, and
trade policies which extend the sway of international market forces"
(Sandbrook 1993a, 4 emphasis added). Since the main concern was with
the process of governance rather with the ideological specificity of
political change, the World Bank and Western governments hardly concern
themselves with the nature and character of the state. Policies of
desubsidization, deregulation, commercialization, privatization,
devaluation, and so on, prescribed by the World Bank only succeed in
breaking down domestic constituencies to make the political landscape
more receptive to liberal political prescriptions. While the World Bank
never anticipated that its "reform" programs would push the masses to
the edge of militant, even violent resistance and struggles for
democracy, its policies have also created an atavistic environment and
badly damaged the legitimacy of the state and dominant elites. This is
the only way we can comprehend the fact that though the unequal
distribution of the pains of adjustment promoted largely unanticipated
political pressures, the content of these pressures have largely
reflected a sort of subservience to western liberal political models and
prescriptions. The impression one gets from public statements from
international financial institutions and Western governments is that
what African states now need to get out of their current state of decay,
conflicts, crises, and near disintegration, are liberal democratic
political models. Will good governance change the African State; make
it more efficient and effective; increase its legitimacy, stability, and
hegemony; and democratize its institutions and processes to make it more
accessible to and reflective of the interests of the people? What will
happen to the current custodians of state power who have actually
precipitated the current crisis in Africa, and who continue to benefit
from the reproduction of the status quo? Will multiparty elections
resolve these contradictions? We do not think so.

The greatest defect of the "good governance" prescription is that it
addresses the symptoms of the African predicament rather than the
structural causes. The timely and interesting piece by Robert D. Kaplan
(1994) in the Atlantic Monthly addresses the well known stories and
predicaments of Africa. While the piece does document the African
reality, sometimes sensationally and at times in overstretched
descriptive terms, its largely ahistorical and unanalytical nature
reduces its worth in terms of explaining the structural roots of the
crisis of politics, power, and production in Africa. Even the World
Bank's Governance and Development (1992) demonstrates not just a
"bureaucratic" approach to the issue of governance, but focuses on
institutional matters outside the social context of the very
institutions which have been destroyed by bad governance. Inefficiency,
waste, mismanagement, corruption, hiring of ghost workers, over-generous
allowances to political elites and bureaucrats, and in the Bank's own
words, "the appropriation of the machinery of government by the elite to
serve their own interests" are manifestations of more structural and
historically determined coalitions, contradictions, and crises (World
Bank 1989, 192). These conditions are not necessarily natural or
spiritually determined. They are the precipitates of particular forms
of social relations, political balances, power relations, alignment and
realignment of class forces, and the region's location and role is a
highly exploitative and very competitive international division of
labor. Without addressing the structural roots of the crisis, the
prescription of good governance would simply fail to resolve any of the
immediate or longer-term problems of Africa. As well, because the
political terrain is so repressive, hostile, uncertain, unstable, and
undemocratic; the state, its custodians, and agencies have been unable
to contain or mediate the forces of economic, social and political decay
and disintegration. Elites loot the treasury because they can get away
with it. The dominant classes privatize the state and its resources
because civil society is weak and highly factionalized. Economic
policies fail because they largely reflect the narrow interests of the
dominant classes and those of foreign capital. The widespread human
rights abuses, mindless corruption, waste, and the subversion of the
goals of nationhood which have characterized the majority of African
social formations since political independence cannot be divorced from
inherited structural contradictions and dislocations. It is doubtful if
mere insistence on good governance, even the imposition of political
conditionalities will resolve these deep-rooted problems. When foreign
aid is denied and countries are isolated until they meet the dictates of
the donors and lenders, who actually suffers? To what extent have
Western imposed sanctions affected the Iraqi elite? How much of the
sanctions imposed on Libya has affected Ghadaffi and the Libyan
bourgeois class? Will the Haitian elite crumble under the yoke of
sanctions and US naval blockade? The truth of the matter is that
cutting foreign aid, redirecting investment and the like do not have
much of an impact on the elites; it is the already impoverished masses
who suffer the most, and when the elites do yield to such pressures,
more often than not, they have already designed ways to accommodate and
domesticate Western dictated or imposed political prescriptions. Under
such conditions, concessions to civil society becomes more of a survival
strategy, a sort of tactical political manoeuver. Robert Bates (1990,
33) captures very accurately the survival tactics employed so perfectly
by Africa's dictators:

In normal times, the power of government opposition is
sufficient to cripple all efforts at political reform. But there is a
time when these governments themselves become champions of the rule of
law. They do so when they are about to fall. At the time of their
political demise, tyrants become converts to civil liberties. On their
political deathbeds, they seek an expanded role for due process,
restrictions on the use of the police and the judicial system, an
independent judiciary, and the rule of law. When they are about to pass
from the political scene, they acquire a vested interest in civil
liberties. They want legal and political shelters from the lust for
revenge on the part of the citizenry they once repressed.

Unfortunately for prodemocracy groups which have become so hungry for
power, they fall for the bait set by the more experienced dictator and
begin to internalize the struggle for power. This was exactly why the
Campaign for Democracy in Nigeria failed to prevent the remilitarization
of Nigerian politics (Ihonvbere, 1994a; Ola-Rotimi and Ihonvbere, 1994).
This is also why Rawlings and Moi were returned to power in Ghana and
Kenya respectively (Ihonvbere 1994b).

Beyond Governance and
Political Conditionality

We have argued above that the new emphasis on governance tends to
simplify and in fact, redirect attention from more critical and
structural issues and contradictions. I am certain that all African
politicians, bureaucrats, and leaders will find nothing new in the
features of positive or good governance as outlined in the literature.
They are very familiar with issues of justice, accountability,
efficiency, separation of powers, freedom of the press, and the like.
The fact that they have never respected these issues is quite another
matter. The way the issue has been addressed thus far, tends to be
patronizing and condescending. Typically, it redirects attention away
from the nature and role of the state in the reproduction of a political
environment which generates repression and instability, erodes
possibilities for economic growth and development, and actually
rationalizes the dependent, even subservient character of African
economies in their relations with transnational capitals. The whole
notion of interdependence, referring to conditions of social, economic
and political relations on the basis of mutual respect and fair (not
necessarily equal) exchange, does not arise in the case of Africa. This
is because as the most poverty-stricken most debt-distressed, most
politically unstable, most foreign dominated, most marginal, and most
vulnerable region in the world, it lacks the capacity to engage in
interdependent relations with other regions at any level. As the World
Bank itself has noted, "deteriorating quality of government, epitomized
by bureaucratic obstruction, pervasive rent seeking, weak judicial
systems, and arbitrary decisionmaking" have significantly increased the
cost of doing business in and with Africa. This has discouraged
investors and "For the most part Africa is simply not competitive in an
increasingly competitive world" (World Bank 1989, 3).

The
World Bank has indeed succeeded in convincing African leaders and
governments that a rapid policy of liberalization and de-statization is
necessary to promote growth and democracy. Claude Ake has contended
that "De-statization or even the strength of the state has nothing to do
with the possibility of democracy. You cannot assume that if you weaken
the state, you strengthen the possibility of democracy. In fact, even
African examples belie that. In Africa, states are very paradoxical.
They are very strong from one perspective and also very weak" (Ake 1990,
5). While one concedes that the African state has not given a good
account of itself and has definitely over-extended itself in the
respective economies, this must be put in context. Because the World
Bank does not work with history, it overlooks why the state has become
the bourgeoisie in Africa (as in most developing countries) in the
context of a largely unproductive, corrupt, and irresponsible elite with
a very tenuous relation to productive activities. It is true as Jeffery
Herbst (1993, 44) has argued that "in Africa state intervention has
often led to the strangulation of the private sector and gross
inefficiency. The question is not the degree of state intervention;
rather, the issue is whether the manner of state intervention promotes
growth or retards it. This perspective is unfortunately missed by those
proponents who argue simply that the private sector should supply most
of Africa's future growth." Yet, we need first, an understanding of the
state and its role in the consolidation/reproduction of social interests
before we can speak of the nature of its intervention: is the African
state structured and constituted in such a way that would facilitate
positive and productive intervention?

The post-colonial state was a continuation of the colonial
state with very minimal changes, mostly in terms of personnel rather
than structure, functions and relations to civil society. Thus it
remained as interventionist, exploitative, and repressive as its
predecessor. It is therefore inappropriate to expect good governance,
social harmony, respect for human rights, and political stability in
social formations presided over by weak and non-hegemonic elites; with
an unstable and weak state, and where civil society is fragmented and
public policies carry very little legitimacy. Good governance cannot be
expected to take root in social formations where the majority of the
people see the state as exploitative, distant, aloof, and structured to
serve the narrow interests of urban elites and foreign capital. Good
governance has little chance of becoming the norm is societies which are
economically, technologically, and culturally dominated by profit and
hegemony-seeking transnational interests and which are structured to
serve the interests of the metropole.

It is perhaps wrong, as the World Bank does, and as Western governments
tend to argue, that de-statization is the solution often without
providing an alternative to replace the state except prescriptions for
an open economy for exploitation by local and transnational capitalists.
The state has always been part of capitalist development. In several
respects, the African state is less corrupt and less wasteful than the
Western counterparts. In fact, from the Savings and Loans scandal to
congressional waste, the American state makes the African state and its
custodians look like amateurs in the art financial waste. The truth is
that for Africa, the pie from which the elites are stealing is small,
and therefore easily noticeable and the impact more immediate. As well,
given the historically determined character of the state and its
custodians; the constraints of dependence, underdevelopment, and global
marginalization, the African state has been unable to promote an
appreciable degree of growth and development to cover up incidents of
corruption, inefficiency, waste, and mismanagement which also
characterize the state in the so-called developed formations. After
all, the elections which saw the return of the Democrats to power with
Bill Clinton as President was not about the private sector per se, but
about the ability of the state to open up foreign markets, provide
social security, create jobs, and so on. These were the issues, and
George Bush was blamed by the Democrats and the majority of the voters
for having failed in these areas. Even the failure of private
corporations and increasing bankruptcies among small businesses were
blamed on the government. The problem in Africa is not that there is
too much government, but that there is hardly any serious government to
speak of. The ramshackle, unstable, illegitimate, non-hegemonic,
corrupt, and inefficient structures often presided over by old men,
ignorant and near illiterate military dictators and professional
politicians who have become adept at manipulating primordial loyalties
can hardly be regarded a constituting a state.

To move beyond
this situation, the current state structures in Africa need to be
dismantled and recomposed. This is one of the major impediments to the
on-going democratization programs in Africa. There is not one in which
the dismantling of the corrupt, exploitative, and repressive state
structure is on the agenda. What the pro-democracy groups such as the
Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) in Zambia, the Forum for
Democracy (FORD) in Kenya, the Movement for Freedom and Justice (MFJ) in
Ghana, and the Campaign for Democracy (CD) in Nigeria are struggling for
is the capture of the same repressive and exploitative state. Though
these struggles are waged in the name of the disadvantaged majority,
there is no agenda to dismantle it and recompose it to reflect the
aspirations, struggles, and needs of the disadvantaged majority. This
hardly gives the people a real choice in the political process but
actually gives a choice between exploiters and oppressors- ancient and
modern! This explains why the MMD has failed so badly in Zambia. It
captured political power through open elections and imbibed the dictates
of the IMF and the World Bank, and has tried to carry out reforms and
institute good governance with the same structures and institutions
which Kenneth Kaunda had used for 28 years without much success. Though
political spaces in Zambia are much more open than was the case under
the corrupt and repressive one-party rule of Kaunda, the MMD has been
unable to deal with gross inefficiency, waste, mismanagement,
corruption, official nepotism, ethnic and sectional loyalties, and the
perception of government as a "hostile force to be feared, evaded,
cheated and defeated as circumstances permit" (Ake 1990, 2). Like in
the vast majority of African states, democratization without
reconstruction of political, economic, and social relations, has
encouraged the localization of loyalties and the emergence of scores of
nuisance opposition parties and movements led by opportunists and those
currently marginalized from power. To be sure, the proliferation of
parties, organizations, unions and the like is evidence of a robust
civil society and the freedom to both organize and to act. Yet, to what
extent can societies with fractured political bases, vulnerable
relations with powerful external forces, and desperate and insecure
elites succeed in harnessing these countless points of opposition and
possibilities for genuine democratization? As Nelson Kasfir has
contended, "these outbursts of mass political energy, though brave and
commendable, will not in themselves reform the underlying structural
conditions that led to authoritarian rule in the first place. The
prospect for reasonably equal empowerment for all social classes in
situations of extreme inequality is also highly contingent" (Kasfir
1992, 587). At a point, it is clear that these movements have emerged
as a result of frustration with the amount of political spaces and
opportunities opened up by the political process. At another level, the
emergence of these organizations reflects the inability of the people to
see any far-reaching changes on the political, especially economic
landscape. While political authoritarianism and the suffocation of
civil society encouraged/strengthened opposition to the repressive
neo-colonial state in Africa, failure of the new democracies to perform
is leading to new challenges and in several respects a deepening of the
political struggles. This situation is yet unclear to many observers
only because of the excessive concentration on elections and other
secondary features of liberal democracy. As Ake (1993) notes, "It is
entirely appropriate of course that everyone should be able to vote.
All the same democracy is not significantly advanced by giving the vote
to the poor while remaining indifferent to the crippling constraints of
poverty. Poverty disempowers and subverts democracy."

Conclusion: Empowerment and Democratization in Africa

It is true that "(p)olitical instability discourages support for
development. Political conflict destroys the foundations of development.
The recent history of Africa has very clearly demonstrated that peace,
stability and security are prerequisites for development" (Boutros-Ghali
1993, 3). In country after country, the privatization of the state, the
means of coercion, and public resources; and the lack of democracy and
accountability have combined with conditions of dependence, foreign
domination, and underdevelopment to negate possibilities for growth and
development. Africa is now caught in a vicious circle: violence and
repression negate possibilities for development, and the lack of
development makes leaders desperate, makes the economy unattractive to
investors, and generates conditions which are conducive to repression
and undemocratic behaviors. As well, it will be wrong, as is gradually
becoming the norm, to pretend that imperialism is dead or over just
because the Cold War has ended. Africa remains a region under the
domination of powerful transnational corporations and international
lenders who extract huge surpluses which they transfer to the metropole.
Hence, in spite of Africa's "poverty" and "non-competitiveness" in the
global market, it managed to pay out to creditors in 1991 a total of $26
billion to service its debt (UN Africa Recovery 1993). How can
African economies generate the resources needed to meet basic needs,
sponsor development projects, and cover the required overhead with which
to attract foreign investors? As well, foreign investors are leaving
their region and moving to Eastern Europe and other parts of the
developing world. At the very best, they are holding back on new
initiatives, ventures, and technology. How can African economies
develop sufficient economic power and exploit their natural resources in
order to generate foreign exchange, promote domestic savings, and create
the necessary economic momentum needed to nurture and consolidate
democracy and good governance? Michael Chege (1991-92) has noted that
private foreign investment in Africa declined from $2.3 billion in 1982
to a mere $900 million in 1989. At the same time, the British withdrew
31 per cent of their investments in the region. Even local investors
are also moving their funds and operations overseas. Finally, the
Western markets remain closed to African exports or are discouraged
through massive tariff and non-tariff barriers, and the long history of
support for repressive leaders is beginning to show its consequences in
a total distrust for, and lack of faith in political leaders, public
policies, and the government. Orthodox structural adjustment has only
made the situation even worse. As Martin Klein (1991) has argued,
structural adjustment as packaged by the World Bank,

...has often made a bad economic situation worse and has condemned a
whole generation of young people to unemployment, to helplessness and to
poverty. Often bitter and alienated, the Mishanga boys of Lusaka and
the students of Bamako are the contemporary counterparts of Nkrumah's
veranda boys and the key groups in most urban demonstrations. And
behind them, stands an even larger mass of people, people ground down by
the daily struggle for survival, people for whom independence has meant
absolutely nothing, people who have neither love for nor commitment to
leaders they did not chose and do not like.

These are some of the specific social and cultural
issues which prescriptions about good governance tend to overlook. The
last three decades has seen the emergence all over Africa of a
rapacious, corrupt, pedestrian, and principleless dominant elites with
easy access to the state and its resources. This elite measures its
success only in terms of the amount of poverty around the main cities
and in the rural areas. It is for instance, the total absence of
electricity in a particular community that gives the rich man's private
electric generator some meaning. It is the fact that the rest of the
community have to fetch water from streams ten miles away that gives the
local rich man's personal water bore hole some meaning. They enjoy
these stark, even if dangerous "differences" and signs of power. They
have grown used to throwing their influence, power, and wealth in the
face of the poor and cannot imagine a better society or an alternative
power and political arrangement. Good governance will not solve the
problem because these are the very enemies of good governance who have
made their millions and billions in the context of bad governance. The
factions and fractions of the dominant class relate to one another at
various levels and they dominate the institutions of state and society.
What this implies is that there has to be a major struggle for
democracy. This must begin with a struggle to remove the institutions,
processes, and structures which has enabled these elites, to dominate
society without accountability. It is these institutions and structures
which they privatized with the end of formal colonialism that have made
it possible for the elite to exploit the people, to manipulate
primordial loyalties, and to reproduce conditions of backwardness in a
rapidly changing global order. It is all too well known that the
"absence of enabling conditions for democratic participation at the
grassroots is the greatest obstacle to democracy in Africa, just as the
transformation of society for the empowerment of ordinary people is the
greatest challenge of democratization-far more important than the
transformation of the state" (Ake 1993). It is not an accident that in
virtually all the countries where elections have taken place, incumbent
governments had to be pressured from within and from without to make
concessions to popular wishes. As Klein rightly notes, "People do not
choose democracy because they read about it. Democracy has invariably
risen out of a struggle against autocracy. Sometimes revolutions begin
for what seem trivial reasons. The American revolution was begun over
some taxes and quite reasonable expectation that the American colonies
should pay for their own defense. Americans already had a tradition of
political participation for large parts of the white male population,
but the creation of a true democracy involved almost two centuries of
struggle" (Klein 1991). Historically, irrespective of ideological
coloration, "any group holding political power ...(has used) that power
to entrench itself both politically and economically," and even where
so-called vanguard parties have captured power, they have used their
positions to "create structures dysfunctional to the continuation of
growth and inimical to equality and social justice" (Klein 1991).

If Africa is to get out of its present quagmire therefore, it
must proceed along the path of empowering the people, their
organizations, and communities. At present, the "democratization of
Africa has focused on the power elite, who are the natural enemies of
democracy. Although the elite has provided the vast majority of the
leaders of the democracy movement, their involvement in democracy
movements is mainly a tactical manoeuver" (Ake 1993). The shameless
ease with which so-called pro-democracy and "June 12 activists" in
Nigeria abandoned the struggle for democracy to join the conservative
military junta of General Sani Abacha in November 1993 supports the
opportunistic character of the power elite in Africa. Even the World
Bank admits that political and economic reforms in Africa must seek to
"empower ordinary people to take charge of their lives, to make
communities more responsible for their development, and to make
governments listen to their people. Fostering a more pluralistic
institutional structure-including nongovernmental organizations and
stronger local government-is a means to these ends" (World Bank 1989,
55). We must be careful how we use and prescribe "empowerment" though.
For the World Bank, it assumes that "empowerment" is compatible with
free enterprise and a liberal democratic tradition. Yet, "empowerment"
is much more than just making it possible for the poor to participate in
elections; in choosing between exploiters who will only pay lip service
to their problems. The process of empowerment "involves transforming
the economic, social, psychological, political and legal circumstances
of the currently powerless;" it involves "the emergence of group
identities (or community), the development of autonomous and coherent
popular organizations, and the defence of, and education about, the
legal rights of the popular sectors" (Sandbrook 1993b, 2). Finally,
empowerment also involves a form of socio-economic and political
restructuring which removes the locus of power from the current
custodians of state power, and enables the currently disadvantaged to
meet their basic needs, fully participate in decision-making, and
provide opportunities to challenge internal and external exploiters.
Thus, for people who have been brutalized, terrorized, exploited,
manipulated, dehumanized, marginalized, intimidate, and repressed for so
long, their empowerment is a signal for liberation; an opportunity to
take charge, and a once and for all opportunity to reorganize how they
govern themselves and live their lives. It is doubtful if such a new
agenda can be found in the current programs which support the power of
the elites of Africa. People do not empower themselves to accept
domination, poor leadership, and exploitation.

It is only through this process of empowerment which "involves
the difficult and hazardous task of constructing political institutions
capable of mediating the conflicting interests of classes, regions,
sexes, and communal groups, and of safeguarding the voice and rights of
hitherto oppressed groups and strata" (Sandbrook 1993b, 3) that the
future of a democratic Africa lies. The construction of such
accountable and democratic institutions and process will see the
dismantling of the neo-colonial state and its replacement with a
national popular state. The national popular state will not only be
democratic but it will also reflect the interests and aspirations of the
working majority in the first instance. It will respect human rights,
promote growth and development, and create an environment which will
enable Africans to attain the highest points of their creative
abilities. It is precisely this new level of creativity, commitment,
patriotism, and participation that will make it possible for science and
technology to be taken seriously, attract investors, encourage
investment in production, define limits for state participation in the
economy, check corruption and political excesses, and make
interdependence the basis of economic relations with other regions and
countries of the world. A strengthened civil society which will
inevitably arise from the process of democratization and empowerment
will check military adventurism, political and ethnic violence, and
negate most of the inherited contradictions, coalitions, conflicts and
crises which have plagued Africa since the 1960s and consolidated the
region's marginalization in the international division of labor.

The attainment of the conditions described above will require
that international organizations, donors and lenders as well as popular
organizations around the world, come to the direct support of
pro-democracy activists in Africa. To be sure, there are countless
opportunistic and mediocre organizations in the region parading
themselves as pro-democracy movements. It is therefore essential to
understand the origins, quality of leadership, size of membership,
programs, nature of existing alliances with other popular groups, and
field experience of African pro-democracy groups before support is
provided. Many of the elected democratic governments will disappoint
their domestic and international supporters initially and there will be
reversals to authoritarian or military forms of governance in several
cases as has happened in Nigeria. As Klein has noted, "It would be
utopian to expect democratic norms to be an immediate success. Many of
Africa's new leaders will fail. Some will revert to authoritarian
methods. Some will prove as corrupt as their predecessors. Some will
be incompetent. The struggle is, alas, one that must be fought over and
over again" (Klein 1991). Under these conditions, Africa and the new
democracies must not be abandoned. Pro-democracy activists and
movements all over Africa need the understanding and support of domestic
and international constituencies with similar objectives in order to
sustain the struggle to deepen the democratic process. The current
successes have opened up some political spaces. These regimes are
failing only because they are employing the very same structures and
patterns of international trade that their predecessors employed. But
they have laid the foundation for deepening the struggle, they have
opened the way for more serious, better organized, and more far-reaching
struggles for empowerment, democracy, democratization, social justice,
human rights, environmental protection, gender equality, rural
development and so on. It is in how these deeper struggles are
consummated in the 1990s that will determine not just the level of
Africa's economic growth and development, but also the region's location
and role in the changing global division of labor.

Ake, Claude, 1990, "The Case for Democracy," in African Governance
in the 1990s, Working Papers From the Second Annual Seminar of the
African Governance Program, The Carter Center of Emory University,
Atlanta, Georgia, March.

-----------------, 1993b, "Introduction," to Richard Sandbrook and
Mohamed Halfani, eds., Empowering People, Building Community, Civic
Associations, and Legality in Africa, Toronto: Center for Urban and
Community Studies, University of Toronto, Canada.